I would say raid 0 isn't such a good idea as the possibility of data loss, I don't think you would get much more performance difference with a single drive, except for benchmarks. Also trim isn't supported in raid 0

Also, the X79 platform gives a good boost in those softwares you mention, because of the additional 2 cores, if cost isn't a priority

I would say that the 3930 will be the "best" as it has more cores AND quad channel memory. The frequency doesn't make as much difference. Here's a quick link to glance over. You've got a heck of a system with $550 worth of SSDs, $200 of RAM, and a $400 GPU already, I'm jealous. I didn't think that kind of system was actually that practical, but then again, the extra <20 seconds it takes my i5-3570K in photoshop is perfectly acceptable for me. I guess you'll have to decide whether or not the 3930 is worth the extra $250 or so over the 3770 to you.

Photoshop and Lightroom are different beasts. Photoshop is very CPU and GPU dependent. If you're going to use PS a lot then get the CPU with the most cores. Lightroom, which is what I end up using MUCH more than photoshop, is all about disc access. Once you've imported the images it's all about speedy access to the files. For that it's your SSD's that matter.

I would make 2 recommendations to you; first, save a little cash on the CPU, with the cost of your other components it won't really make that much difference. Secondly, and more importantly, instead of RAID'ing the SSD's, which will just slow them down eventually, use one as a boot/application drive, and use the other one as a dedicated Lightroom cache drive. That's where you'll get real speed.

My machine, which is not as fast as the one you're spec'ing, throws around 70mb D800 RAW files like they are nothing.

Hmm, I just went through essentially this same exercise with my wife's computer since she just got a D800 and needed a big jump in computing power. A couple of differences, though. She does mainly portraits with little HDR / panorama / focus stacking stitching type operations, so straight processing power wasn't super high on the list, nor was video work.

Our requirements were:Fast import from CF (D800 Raw files are huge and can take a lot of time)Fast access to library (Previous configuration had all photos stored on server)Fast 1:1 rendering in LRFast filter processing in LR and PSGood balance performance / price (because obviously you can through a ton of money at something to make it the "best" but does it really buy you significant gains)

My wife is not really technical, but she was duly impressed with the type of speed this system was generating with her D800 files, as was I. In fact I like working on her system much more than my own.

What I've found is that the storage system performance has a much bigger impact through the workflow than anything else, and with your base config of SSDs and RAM you should be there already, but I don't think RAIDing is the best choice.

What you may find, though is that working with heavy video editing and doing the big pano and HDR stitching in Photoshop, you *MAY* put the additional cores to use, but the step up to the X79 system is pretty hefty, and you'll have to justify that. I think that the 3770k would be sufficient.